Vigil
by WargishBoromirFan
Summary: A little moodpiece featuring Eowyn in the Houses of Healing. Genfic.
1. Dark Vigil

Disclaimer: Tolkien owns all.

* * *

They left. From hardened soldiers like my brother and Lord Aragorn, to boys who had only seen their first battle with the defense of Minas Tirith. I never saw them go, but the healers tell me that they made quite the impression; bold warriors all. I never said goodbye, but they said that I would surely see my brother again. He was king now.

I waited. I waited, for it was all I had left to do. I had seen my battle, tasted the bittersweet flavor of victory, and somehow, I had survived. I was as yet unsure if it had been worth surviving. My arm still bothered me, but it was a welcome distraction, a reminder that my uncle had not died in vain. Because of him, the world would continue, for at least a little longer. I simply was not sure what was left in this world for me.

On my better days, I would walk along the gardens and the walls, watching for a break in the clouds. Only the fires burning in the distance interrupted the darkness. Beyond the quiet walls of the healer's complex, Gondor burned her dead, cleaned the rubble, and shored up her gates. There were too many bodies to bury them all. Even further in the distance, Barad-dur sent up bright fires of its own. For all the smoke rising around the city, I could not help but shiver in the cold.

He was there, sometimes, holding a silent vigil of his own. He did not quake at the sight of those fires, but when he thought I was not looking, he sometimes reached for his shoulder, touching some memnonic wound of his own. He and I were much alike, in some ways. We were two warriors sick of war, reduced to waiting for our kings.

We did not talk much, he and I. What was there to say? Pretty speeches could not bring back my uncle or his father, nor could they hasten Eomer's safe return. Words would not brighten the leaden sky or heal our scars. I chose to keep to silence, for I had become acclimated to it during my brother's exile. Perhaps it was a poor cloak against the cold, but silence was an armor of a sort. He, too, seemed to appreciate the brooding quiet of the garden wall. He might walk with me, but he did not try to penetrate my shield of silence with expressions of pity or false optimism.

Days turned into weeks, and still we waited. He told me that his mother's brother and cousins had ridden with Aragorn, as well. I did not tell him that my heart had gone with those two kings. I think he already knew.

I watched the fires in the distance until my eyes began to water from exhaustion. He would lean against his staff, looking over the walls, until his legs shook from the effort of holding himself up. Then he collapsed slowly against the wall, his head sinking unwillingly to his knees. A few times, we even fell asleep in the gardens, straining to make out anything that might resemble a being - friend or foe - against the watchfires. Neither of us was in much shape to deal with a potential enemy, but it did not hurt to keep on guard.

I did not like to think of how an enemy might come upon this city. The hordes Sauron had sent against us had been destroyed, and the soldiers of Gondor had been very thorough about their business. To have more coming upon us would mean that orcs could be spared from Mordor. There were not nearly as many men leaving Minas Tirith as had entered it, but we could afford no more. I was not sure that we could afford to send as many as the number that had left.

The gardens remained quiet, offering an empty sort of peace and safety. Beyond, there were the sounds of cleaning and construction, but even the city was subdued, left to wait. Minas Tirith seemed gray and ashen, as wounded as her remaining children.


	2. Rain Dreams

Once again, Tolkien belongs to Tolkien. The Twilight Zone belongs to the Twilight Zone.

* * *

I did not know exactly when it all changed. It had begun to drizzle in the gardens, and both of us had been too tired to move in to shelter on that day. Slowly, I lifted my head from the bench, unmindful of the water running down my face and the attendants that scrambled to shoo us inside.

"Look." My companion pointed towards something beyond the walls. His voice seemed hoarse from disuse and exposure to such foul weather. He, too, seemed unmoved by his keepers' pleadings. I raised a hand to block the rain, trying to make out a cloud of dust against the fog. Nothing moved along the ground. I attempted to roll the stiffness out of my bad shoulder and turned to face him. His dark head moved a fraction to the left, then centered, and then his gray eyes turned upwards towards the clouded sky. I pushed my hair away from my face, following his gaze.

Crying mournfully against the drizzle, a solitary eagle wheeled above us. "A foul omen," a nursemaid said, shuddering, and then threw a spare cloak over my shoulders, leading me away. I turned away from the bird to see that he was acquiescing to his worried healers at last. He gave me a grave look, and then bowed his head, as if we were making our formal farewells. Beyond him, the fires had disappeared into the fog and smoke.

I spent days, months, _years_ staring out my window, waiting for the rain to end. It never came down hard, but it never stopped, either, and the healers would not have a wounded lady out in such weather. I could have asked to meet him, I know, or at least sook the company of my fellow Rohirrim, but the gardens had been where it had begun and would be the place where it would end. But the rain fell, and fell, and fell, wiping clean the ashes of the field, turning the pryes to smoldering, soggy coals. It continued until long after I had given up hope of returning to the outside, until after Merry, my brave fellow secret soldier, at last convinced me to make rounds of my own.

They were not always Rohirrim, nor had they always suffered from Black Breath. Not all were happy to see me, and a part of me preferred the company of those who were not. Those whose pain put them beyond our reach required nothing of me save my presence; my mind was free to roam restlessly as it willed. Those who distrusted my motives forced me to actually find such things, to wonder once more how my strange fancies had brought me to this place. And as ever, I prayed for the rain to release me from it.

It was not a swift process, but even the black clouds of Mordor can be exhausted, coming back down to the earth as rain. The healers assured me that it had barely been a week, though it had seemed decades to me. At last I walked out, into the watered-down sunshine, to find not a single fire burned beyond the gates of Minas Tirith.

He was already there, returned to his watchpost, leaning against his staff. "Gone," he whispered. "They're all gone." I knew he was not talking about the orcs, gone though they might be, too. Suddenly needing the aid of a staff myself, I slumped against him.

I woke to the feel of rain on my face, unmindful of the attendants' cries. Off in the distance, an eagle screamed its shrill call. Mordor had fallen.


End file.
